Grass Valley, one of the iconic equipment brands in the television industry, is off and running under new ownership and management. As of January 2011, it is owned by Francisco Partners under the guidance of president and CEO Alain Andreoli.

"Francisco Partners is here for the long term," he said in a press event at the NAB Show. "We want to make Grass Valley the innovator again. … It means we will be more and more of a consultant for our customers."

Grass Valley launched Stratus, a media workflow application suite that allows content stored on Grass Valley K2 Summit and K2 Solo servers to be viewed and modified from anywhere in the world. Also new are upgrades to the Trinix router, which provide direct fiber optic I/O and multiviewer output from the router.

The FAA’s current rules and proposed ban on flight over people, requirement of visual line of sight and restriction on nighttime flying, effectively prohibit broadcasters from using UAS for newsgathering. ~ WMUR-TV General Manager Jeff Bartlett